And now the first-term councilman is suing, saying the rumors are politically-motivated and have damaged his reputation. He wants a court to award him million bucks for each reference.

“These people are totally vicious and out of bounds,” Nguyen told IA. “I begged them to stop but they keep taunting me.”

The defamation suit, filed last week in Santa Clara County Superior Court, said An Van Le — who uses the pen-name Kiem Ai — and Dan Tu Vo published statements about Nguyen “with malice or reckless disregard for the truth.”

Nguyen alleged the articles portrayed him in a false light, injured his reputation and inflicted severe emotional distress.

Le and Vo were unavailable for comment.

The articles appeared in numerous Vietnamese blogs, online forums and mailing lists. The squabble began last month after Nguyen led an effort to ban the communist flag from city flag poles. Nguyen first asked the city to consider prohibiting the flag all over San Jose, but that raised free-speech concerns. The proposal was tweaked to cover city property only.

But the writers published posts in Vietnamese — translated to English in the lawsuit — that said Nguyen’s push to limit the ban to city flagpoles only meant he legalized it everywhere else. They claim Nguyen failed to follow the model of Westminster, a Southern California city that opposes the flying of the flag anywhere — without banning it outright.

“Traitor Tam Nguyen conspired… to legalize communist bloody flag in the city of San Jose,” one translated post read, according to the lawsuit. “Tam Nguyen has defrauded the trust of the people and turned the ‘ban the flag’ into ‘permit to fly communist flag’ everywhere in San Jose.”

Nguyen says the writers “twisted” what was meant to be a good move for the community for political reasons. He said it’s because they’re backing Van Le, a resident who unsuccessfully ran for state Assembly last year and is rumored as a possible challenger to Nguyen’s re-election next year.

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